Flow Visuals

Flow visuals enable us to explore user behavior across a sequence of discrete time-stamped
events, towards a defined goal. They only plot data that achieves this goal.

Flows are an implementation of a Sankey plot: blocks represent individual events, and the
width of the connection is proportional to the size of the measurement connecting any two
events. The plot is defined by a path, or sequence, through time-stamped events. To learn how
to identify and define events of a dataset, see Events.

Best Practices

Keep in mind the following best-practices when defining the path of a flow visual:

Use a single common event as a 'start' of the flow visual. This makes it easier to
understand the sequencing and the pattern of the following events.

Define the intermediate event to include more than one event type, and use range bounds
(minimum and maximum) to correctly model the business use case. Also, ensure that the
intermediate event excludes the end goal.

Define the goal event to show the flow terminating when that goal is achieved.

Basic Flow Visual

The following steps demonstrate how to create a new flow visual on a dataset Campaign.
This dataset is based on data previously imported into Arcadia from the datafile campaign.csv. For an overview of shelves that specify this visual, see
Shelves for Flow Visuals.

Measure aggregates the measure that controls for the thickness
of the 'flow' connections, such as Record Count.

Filters selects for particular conditions.

Top K selects the top N number of entries.

All shelves, except Filters and Top K,
are mandatory.

Populate the shelves from the available Fields:

Under Dimensions, select timestamp and place
it on the Time shelf.

Under Dimensions, select user_id and place it
on the Session shelf.

Under Events, select Start and place it on the
Path shelf. Similarly, add All non-purchase application
events and Purchase, in that order.

Under Measures, select Record Count and place
it on the Measure shelf.

Leave Filters and Top K empty.

Click Refresh Visual.

The flow visual appears.

Flow Visual

Click (pencil icon) next to the title of the
visualization to edit it, and enter the new name.

Change the title to Campaign - Flow.

At the top left corner of the Visual Designer, click Save.

Modeling the Min/Max Range of Events

Note that on the visual we just constructed, each connection has only two segments. This
does not model the real business case, so let us refine the visual. To model more of the
path that satisfies the event conditions, we need to modify the intermediate event,
All non-purchase application events, on the Path
shelf. Note that setting a higher maximum models more of the data.

On the Path shelf, click the All non-purchase
application events field.

In the Event Properties menu, set Min
Rage parameter to 0.

Similarly, set the Max Range parameter to 5.

Set Minimum and Maximum Range for Intermediate Events

Click Refresh Visual.

The flow visual appears, showing multiple paths towards a Purchase
outcome. Note that in this form, the numbered steps include the
Purchase event along the way, and each Purchase block
terminates the flow of connections that flow to it, in a step-down manner.

Flow Visual, Intermediate Events Range 0-5

Modeling the Goal Event

Notice also that we can specify the Goal of the flow visual, to generate a plot with
a single terminating goal block. To do that, perform the following steps:

Note that in this form, the numbered steps exclude the
Purchase event, which collects all flows on the extreme right, and
then terminates them.

Flow Visual, Goal Set

To remove the Goal option from an event, click the Purchase
field on the Path shelf, and de-select the Set as
Goal option.

Remove the Goal Event

Reorganizing the Flow Visual

You may wish to examine a particular business case scenario, such as how card
impressions influence the final decision to purchase. To see this path,
simply click on a flow leading to the first card impression, and the flow highlights the
entire path.

If the path is complicated, you can change the order of the nodes in any step of the flow
visual, simply by clicking on that node and dragging it up or down.

Using Tooltips in Flow Visuals

The flow visual is very good at demonstrating a sequence of events, and the proportion of
events that pass through a particular node. However, because it does not use an axis, there
is no relative scale that conveys the actual size of measurements on the chart. Thus,
tooltips become a very important component of the flow visual.

Consider the Tooltips in the following chart.

Tooltip 1 shows the information for the first card
impression event: that there are exactly 4 items and that it represents 8.2% of the
total.

Tooltip 2 demonstrates the correlation between the first two
card impression events: that it represents half of the source and all of the
target, as well as all of the link.

Tooltip 3, Tooltip 4, and
Tooltip 5 are very interesting because they demonstrate that when
the user starts their application interaction with card impression events, it
typically takes 4 or 5 additional steps to get to a purchase event.

Using the Flow Visual - Tooltips

Comprehensive Workflow Model

Lastly, remember that flow visuals only show data that achieves the desired goal, in the
specified number of steps. The following image shows only 5 intermediate steps (specified as
maximum), and contain 48 purchases altogether.

Flow Visual with 5 Intermediate Steps

Contrast this with a visual that covers 10 intermediate steps (specified as maximum); it
contains 51 purchases.